“Alright, I’ve gone on long enough, I’ll turn this over to FLIGHT who will explain what’s going to happen over the next week… and years. FLIGHT?”
Chrissie stepped up onto the stage. “Thanks boss. Okay, now I’m sure you’ve all read the information I sent you, so there’s no point in going over that again. You know what the basic plan is. What we are going to do this week is familiarize you with Mission Control operations. Based on your individual skill sets, I’ve already assigned a few positions. The rest will start off with luck of the draw. That said, eventually most of you will be learning several positions. In fact, those of you that stay with us for the long haul will eventually be sitting at the FLIGHT console as a Watch Officer, but that’s a long way off.
“Now, something you don’t know is that we can do all this online. We have the capability for you to login from your dorm room or apartment and effectively function at your assigned position just like you were sitting here in the MCC. It is, obviously, not quite as easy. It’s a little slower and communication between desks is not as easy. But it can be done. We have no plans to actually do it that way but it is a very useful training tool. So, what we’ll do is familiarize you with the setup and the training routines and then send you all on your way and do the rest online.
“Alright, now… let me see, okay, everybody get up and line up along the wall there and I’ll make the initial assignments and then we’ll do a launch run-through just so you can see what it’s like. As I said, most of these aren’t permanent, you’ll eventually rotate through several seats. Okay, we’ll start from this corner right here.
“Flight Dynamics Officer, FDO or FIDO, Dr. Paul Ellis, Caltech, Aeronautics.
“Rendezvous & Guidance Procedures, GUIDANCE, Jerry Oliver, University of Illinois, Applied Mathematics.
“Ground Controller, GC, Mike Lindsey, Purdue, Applied Physics.
“Propulsion & Booster, PROP or BOOSTER depending on what you’re doing, Sheri Boehm, Harvard, Aerospace Engineering.
“Guidance Navigation & Control Systems, GNC, Dr. Kristy Covby, Virginia Tech, Planetary Science.
“Maintenance, Mechanical & Crew Systems, MMCS or MAX, Dr. James Springer, Penn State, Astronautics.
“Electrical Generation and Illumination, EGIL or EAGLE, Dianne Dufour, USC, Applied Mathematics.
“Emergency, Environmental & Consumables Operations Manager, EECOM, Robert Vandergriff, Georgia Tech, Applied Mechanics.
“Flight Activities Officer, FAO, Dr. Joanne Leach, MIT, Astronautics. By the way, whoever is sitting FAO, you'll also be handling EVAs, extra-vehicular activities, should any take place.
“Instrumentation & Communications Officer, INCO, Dr. David Barnett, University of Michigan, Applied Physics.
“We’ll skip FLIGHT for now, that’s my seat.
“Spacecraft Communicator, CAPCOM, Carol Hanson, Cal Berkeley, Astronautics. Carol, you’re liable to be a little bored there as we have no capsule to communicate with in this first round of launches. But we need to prepare for it anyway.
“Data Processing Systems, DPS or DIPS, Dr. Wran Chao, Caltech, Computer Science. Wran, might as well make yourself at home, you’re not going anywhere. This is why you’re here.
“Public Affairs Officer, PAO, Dr. Heidi Christianson, Caltech, Mechanical Engineering/Aeronautics. Heidi, yeah, I know, PAO is probably beneath the dignity of a Caltech Ph.D. in Engineering but we need somebody in that seat that understands what’s going on and speaks the language. Don’t worry; you’ll rotate out of it.
“Mission Operations Director, MOD, Dr. Julio Mendoza, Penn State, Aeronautics. Julio, don’t get too excited, MOD’s not quite as prestigious as it sounds. MOD is our communications with the outside world, other than PAO. You’ll be dealing with all the entities that, well, we don’t own: Johnson, Kennedy, the Cape, ULA, SpaceX, blah, blah, blah. You’ll be particularly busy during launches.
“And finally, Medical Officer, SURGEON, Rebecca Stockman, Salve Regina, Nursing. Our very own local girl. And obviously, Rebecca, you’re not going anywhere either. You’ll be working under the tutelage of our Flight Surgeon, Susan.
“Alright, everybody comfy? Okay, we’re gonna get right to it and conduct a run-through of launch one. This is an Atlas V 521 launching from pad LC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. This launch will take place four weeks from now on December 7th. We will commence at T minus 30 minutes and counting.” Chrissie walked back to her FLIGHT console and initiated the training routine.
Jeff motioned to Abby, Gabe and Susan, nodded to the door and the four of them met in the ground floor hallway. “What do you think?”
“There’s an awful lot of talent in there,” said Abby.
Gabe smiled. “I think Caltech won.”
Jeff laughed. “Duh. I wonder why?”
“I think Chrissie has done a stupendous job,” Susan offered. “To put all this together, particularly with her lack of technical background. Wow, what a Herculean effort.”
Jeff nodded. “Agreed. And it will be recognized.” He shook his head, “I don’t think she’s slept since October.”
Lunch that day consisted of a two-foot tall stack of pizzas in the MCC but supper for their new crew was a bit more elaborate. Two twelve-foot dining tables were setup in the dining room and, to take some of the strain off of them, Jeff had hired a cooking and clean-up crew. Following small group tours of the house and a social gathering in the great room, promptly at 7:00 PM everyone was seated for dinner.
Jeff stood and raised his wine glass. “A toast. Again, I wish to thank all of you for coming and volunteering for this program. I know it’s going to add greatly to your already considerable workload, but I trust you will find the experience rewarding and, over the long haul, beneficial to your careers and future endeavors. As the British general, Sir Brian Horrocks said to his XXX Corps just prior to launching them into Operation Market Garden during World War II, this is a story you will tell your grandchildren, and mightily bored they’ll be. Welcome aboard.” As he took his seat he asked of the room, “So, how’d it go today?”
There was a chorus of “Good” and “Great.”
“Ah, no problems?”
“There was one minor glitch,” said Sheri Boehm, GUIDANCE.
Jeff smiled. “And that was?”
“Well, FLIGHT threw us a curve. There was an auto-docking failure on the B-Centaur and we discovered it’s not as easy to drive as it looks. There were a few fender benders. Then Commander Nolan came in and made it look way too easy.”
Jeff laughed. “Pretty good pilot, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Perhaps sometime on down the road she can take you up in our Citation and let you experience a little weightlessness.”
Eyes lit up around the room.
“Oh please,” Abby groaned, “we just had the upholstery cleaned.”
He smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, there are an almost incalculable number of things that can go wrong in a mission like this, and over the next few years you’re going to see most all of them in the trainer. And many of them you will see more than once, because you will have to know what action to take in the event of an actual emergency. It’s like flying an airplane. Pardon my French but, shit happens, and you have to be prepared for it. When taking a check flight in an aircraft you haven’t flown before, you just know that the instructor is gonna hit you with an engine out on a missed approach. It’s like death and taxes, it’s inevitable. Still, when it happens it scares the living daylights out of you. Well, maybe not Abby, but it sure scares the hell out of us mortals.”
Gabe nodded. “That’s a fact.”
After dinner the group was shuttled back to their hotel with instructions to get a good night’s sleep and be prepared to start up again first thing in the morning. As they pulled out Jeff turned to Chrissie, “You look beat.”
“Yeah, these past few months have been pretty hectic.”
“I know. Before you turn in, can I talk with you fo
r a minute in my office.”
“Sure.”
They walked upstairs and both sat on the sofa in Jeff’s office.
“I won’t keep you long,” Jeff said. “I just wanted to tell you that you’ve done a magnificent job with the MCC and all the preparations. I don’t say ‘thank you’ often enough to you guys, but I’m saying it now. I hired you as a secretary and, well, because that’s how things sometimes turn out, asked you to become an aerospace engineer in sixteen months – all on your own. And you did it.”
Chrissie smiled. “I had a little help. Gabe and Abby have crammed more knowledge into my head than I thought it could hold. Sometimes I think my head is about ready to explode.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling. But Chrissie, you done good.”
“Thanks boss, but that’s what you pay me for.”
“Yeah, and not nearly enough.” Jeff stood and walked to his desk. “Starting today, I’m putting you on the same salary and benefits plan as Gabe, Abby and Sue. You’re every bit as important to the effort as they are and it’s only fair that you should be adequately compensated for your work.”
Chrissie’s jaw dropped.
“And to make up for past neglect on my part, here’s a little bonus.” Jeff handed her a check.
“A hundred thousand dollars?!” she gasped. “I can’t take this!”
“Sure you can, and you deserve every penny of it.”
Chrissie got up, gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine my life would take this path.”
Jeff grinned. “That makes two of us.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’re going to go to bed and get some sleep. You’ve got another long day ahead of you tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” And she headed for the door.
“How are they doing?”
She paused at the door. “Good. Real good. That’s a lot of very smart people.”
Jeff nodded.
“I will say this though; herding rocket scientists is a lot like herding cats.”
Jeff laughed. “They are a strange breed, aren’t they?”
Chrissie nodded. “Good night and, thank you.”
Jeff walked into the tower study and stood for a while gazing at the moonlight dancing on the cove far below. Even in the comfort of Wrentham House with the fireplace glowing he felt the coming chill of winter. Soon there would be snow. He reflected briefly on events of the past year and a half and shook his head. “What a ride.”
Saturday, December 7, 2013 (T minus 836 days)
Abby glanced at Jeff. “Pearl Harbor Day. You superstitious?”
Jeff shook his head. “No. But ask me again in an hour.”
Jeff, Abby, Gabe and Susan stood together behind the front desks in the Spacecraft Operations Center of the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, looking across the Launch Control Center.
“This is unbelievable,” Gabe said, staring at the video wall and the image of the brilliantly lit Atlas V 521 sitting on launch pad LC-41 in the pre-dawn darkness. “Oh god I hope it works.”
Jeff put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “It’ll work. It damn well better, it cost me $110 million.”
The launch sequence was in a thirty-minute hold for final cryogenic fueling. In another half an hour the countdown would recommence for their first launch.
A Lockheed Martin staffer came down the stairs behind them, “Sir, they’re ready for you in the Hospitality Room.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks. On our way.” He turned to the others. “Media time folks. Let’s go talk to the press for a few minutes.” Jeff led the team out of the SOC and down the hall to the Hospitality Room. “Good morning all. You’re up bright and early. We’ve got about fifteen minutes and you already have our prepared statements from yesterday so, if you’ve got any last minute questions, fire away.”
“Jerry Bell, AP. As this is the first launch of an Atlas V 521 to Mars, are you concerned at all about the rocket’s reliability?”
Jeff smiled. “No, we have complete confidence in the 521, ULA, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Atlas Vs launched the MRO and New Horizons and we’re confident this one will get the job done for us. Obviously we’re nervous and a little apprehensive. This is our first launch and, you know, things happen. And because of our tight schedule we can’t afford many mishaps. But we’re confident.”
“Susan Graf, Houston Chronicle. Mr. Grey, could you give us a brief overview of how this launch relates to your launches scheduled for next week?”
“Sure. By the way, there are some folders on the table over there that cover the whole thing in nauseating detail. You might want to grab one. But in short, this launch is essentially our surveyor. It’s based on the Viking Program of the late 1970s. In fact, our craft was built from the actual original Viking schematics, but updated considerably with current technology. This craft has two parts, an orbiter and a lander. The lander will, hopefully, land in close vicinity to our intended landing site in the Margaritifer Basin, and provide us with some ground level imagery of the site. But, uh, most importantly it will serve as a navigation beacon for the cargo vessel launching next week to home in on. This lander will arrive on Mars about three weeks before the cargo will arrive and during that time we’ll be able to establish its exact location and then offset its beacon – electronically – to provide the later cargo lander a precise target for our landing site. The orbiter will be initially inserted into a 1,500 x 32,600 kilometer synchronous orbit, as was Viking 1. Following lander separation, the orbiter will be trimmed into a 17,031 kilometer geostationary orbit approximately forty-five degrees west of our landing site. That will give us continual communications capability while we’re on the planet and exploring it – as line of site communications are pretty limited – and will also provide us with much more consistent communications with Earth. So, in a nutshell, this package is Christopher Columbus.” Jeff nodded to another reporter. “Yeah.”
“Larry Gephardt, USA Today. You mentioned your tight schedule and this being your ‘surveyor.’ What will you do if this mission fails?”
Jeff laughed. “Well, aren’t you the cheery one this morning. Uh, go home and have a stiff drink and good cry. No, uh, we have a lot of redundancy built in. It would certainly be inconvenient, but not the end of the world. Assuming the worst case – say, the rocket blows up on the launch pad – we’ll still go ahead with our cargo launch next week. Its landing accuracy may not be quite as good as we would hope for, but we’ll find it. And, there is a backup beacon in that package. So, we’ll make do. As for the orbiter, we haven’t built a backup, but we certainly could and would take it with us when we launch. So, though it would certainly be annoying, loss of this package would not result in any change at all in our schedule.”
A voice came over the building public address system. “Cryogenic operations are complete, countdown will recommence in three minutes at T minus 30 minutes.”
“Okay,” Jeff said, “one more question then we gotta go. Yeah, in the back.”
“Silvia Sanchez, Orlando Sentinel. As I understand it, your launch next week actually consists of three launches. I see rockets staged on pads 37 and 40, but where’s the third?”
“Sitting over in the Vertical Integration Facility, waiting for LC-41 to clear.”
“Will Lockheed Martin have sufficient time to stage that rocket?”
“Well, they told me they can do it. As soon as we’re done this morning, the Mobile Launch Platform will return to the VIF, pickup our 551, and head back here. They have a week, and they said that was enough. Okay everyone, sorry to cut this short but we need to get back into the SOC… and start wringing our hands.” He grinned. “Following the launch we’ll be happy to talk to you again, if you’d like.”
As Jeff reentered the SOC the Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services Launch Director announced, “We are Go for launch at T minus 30 minutes and counting.”
Jeff sat at the front left desk, donned a communications headset, and punched up the direct line to Newport. “Newport, Jeff. Chrissie, how’s it looking there?”
“Looking good. I really think we could do it from here if they’d let us.”
“Yeah, well, the insurance company would probably take a dim view of that.”
“You sure have a roomful of excited people here, even though they don’t have much to do except watch. Sure wish I was there.”
“Yeah, I wish you were too. But, they also serve who sit and watch the video displays.”
“I don’t think that quote will make you famous, boss.”
“Ah well, guess we’ll just have to find something else.”
“I wish my granddad could see me now,” Abby said from the desk behind Jeff.
Jeff glanced around at her. “He wouldn’t be any prouder of you than I am.”
Abby looked down at him and smiled softly.
“We are at T minus four minutes and holding,” came the announcement from Launch Control. “Countdown will recommence in ninety seconds.”
Rather than listen to ASOC PAO, Jeff tuned into Heidi’s PAO commentary from Newport.
PAO, “Five minutes. The Launch Director at LC-41 has informed Launch Control that the Atlas V, ‘Mars One Alpha’ is Go for launch. The countdown will recommence in sixty seconds. We are Go for Mars One Alpha. Automatic sequencing will commence at three minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“She sure sounds professional,” Susan said.
“You listening to Heidi?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah.”
PAO, “Countdown has recommenced at T minus four 4 minutes. We have green boards at the Cape and Newport. All stations are reporting Go for launch. Captain Jeffrey Grey and his crew – Dr. Gabriel Frederick, Lieutenant Commander Abigail Nolan, and Dr. Susan Lú – are watching eagerly from the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center at Cape Canaveral, anxiously awaiting the first giant step on their path to Mars.”
Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) Page 38
